A Democrat House member wants to remove a historic statue in Washington DC because of “racism”, but there is one major inconvenience for the Democrats.
On Wednesday, according to local DC outlet WJLA-TV, Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s non-voting delegate to the House, introduced legislation to remove the statue of Andrew Jackson that sits across from the White House in Lafayette Park.
The arguments that she puts forward are the ones that we have heard time and again from the left: Jackson owned slaves and he was apparently responsible for the genocide of indigenous people.
“This prominent location in the nation’s capital, right outside of the White House, should never have honored a man who owned slaves and was responsible for the deaths of roughly 4,000 Native Americans. Jackson’s entire tenure is a shameful part of our history, and I will see to it that he is no longer honored with a statue in Lafayette Park,” Norton said in a statement, according to WJLA.
First off, this is yet another example of the left trying to erase and discredit the achievements of famous Americans just because they do not meet today’s politically correct standards.
Andrew Jackson, regardless of what one may think of him, is a very significant figure in our history. He defeated the invading British at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, saving the nation from invasion, and he went on to become the first president who was not born into wealth, but rather worked for it.
The modern left seems to hate America so much, that they seem intent on discrediting their achievements, even those of men like Abraham Lincoln who fought to end slavery.
But there is also a major caveat in this particular tale of far-leftism run amok – Andrew Jackson was one of the founders of the Democratic Party!
According to the Miller Center, what we now know as the Democratic Party first emerged from the large popular following of Jackson when he was president, and became an organized party under his successor Martin van Buren.
Thus, the man who owned slaves and was responsible for the genocide of Native Americans was a Democrat.
The Democrats are not only erasing American history, but they are also erasing evidence of their own party’s historic failures and shortcomings.
The Democratic Party in the 19th century was the pro-slavery party and many of its members had sympathies with the Confederacy during the Civil War. The Republican Party, by contrast, was founded as an anti-slavery party and its first president was the one to end slavery.
But by getting rid of this statue, the Democrats are hoping that Americans will forget that they were not always the righteous, moral, anti-racist party that they claim to be today.
In many ways, the Democratic Party hasn’t changed since the 19th century. It is the party that promotes and celebrates abominable evils like abortion, and it has sided with radical political movements that are trying to divide this nation along racial lines.
Now we see that the problems in this party go back to the very beginning of the party, but the Democrats do not want to acknowledge that.
Instead, they just want to pretend like they are and have always been the good guys fighting against those evil, racist Republicans who are “threats to democracy.”
The problem for them, however, is that history is never that simple.
It is frankly rather messy, and we need to be willing to own up and face the hard facts if we are really interested in learning from the past.
From everything we’ve seen them say and do, however, Democrats aren’t nearly as interested in learning from the past as erasing it. And that’s not good for anyone.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
* Article Re-published by: The Gateway Pundit